There is an ever expanding number of household products such as handwashes and domestic cleaning sprays professing to provide anti-bacterial properties. Often these products claim to eliminate work surfaces and the like of all known bacteria. Such claims are typically misleading at best. Widely reported research has shown that many of these currently available products are no better at reducing the onset of coughs, colds or other such infections or ailments than thoroughly washing one hands or cleaning the work surfaces. Indeed many such infections or aliments are caused by viruses which currently available anti-bacterial products are unable to combat, despite what they purport to achieve.
There is also an increasing concern about bacterial and viral infections being transmitted to patients and staff in hospitals and the like. One vector of infection is believed to be incompletely disinfected surfaces, which may harbour bacteria and/or viruses that are resistant to existing surface cleaning agents. There is a strong suspicion that the spread of the recent SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak may have been linked to the ability of the SARS virus to resist conventional cleaning agents/disinfectants. Viruses spread from an infected patient thus remain viable and ready to be picked up by and to infect other patients and medical staff. Other pathogens, such as the MRSA bacterium, are also suspected to be surviving existing surface cleaning/disinfecting agents and routines.
It is known to use cationic surfactants, such as quaternary ammonium salts, as dual-purpose surface cleaning agents and bactericides. However, while such materials are generally found to be sufficient to deal with, say, food-poisoning bacteria in a food preparation environment, they are not regarded as sufficiently active to handle more dangerous and more resistant pathogens in a medical context.
Alcohols, such as iso-propanol, and halogens, such as iodine, have in the past been used individually as relatively crude disinfecting agents around wounds and skin lesions, but they have not proven suitable for wide area cleaning of hard surfaces and the like. For example, iodine can stain many surfaces, and its use at high concentrations is limited by safety considerations.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a liquid cleansing and disinfecting preparation, suitable for use on hard surfaces, with a high anti-viral and anti-bacterial effectiveness.